Standalone Pages

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

What about the Ground Zero Church?

St. Nicholas was a small, four-story masonry building, housing a Greek Orthodox Christian Church that was destroyed on September 11, 2001 when one of the Twin Towers collapsed on it during the worst terrorist attack in this history of this country.

While the Cordoba House Project—the Ground Zero mosque—raced through regulatory approval last month, the rebuilding of St. Nicholas was put on hold by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Government officials say the matter is closed and will not be reopened.

The Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America accused New York officials on Tuesday of turning their backs on the reconstruction of the only church destroyed in the Sept. 11 attacks, while the controversial mosque near Ground Zero moves forward.

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An archdiocese official said Tuesday that the situation has created "consternation" for those still struggling to jump-start talks over the church.

"We have people that are saying, why isn't our church being rebuilt and why is there ... such concern for people of the mosque?" Father Alex Karloutsos, assistant to the archbishop, told FoxNews.com. He said "religious freedom" would allow a place of worship for any denomination to be built, but accused officials with the Port Authority of making no effort to help move the congregation's project along.

Someone please explain how government officials can fast track the construction of a brand new shrine to a Islam at Ground Zero and stand in the way of the rebuilding of a church that already existed there? The mosque is a new project. It will replace a facility that was damaged by the landing gear of one of the planes, and damaged so badly that engineers recommended its demolition. The church was already there.

Michael Berry, a radio talk show host at KTRH in Houston, penned an editorial yesterday, which ran today in World Net Daily. In that piece, Michael writes the following:

On May 7, 2009, the first National Day of Prayer of his administration, President Obama broke with tradition by failing to hold a White House ceremony to honor the day. Earlier this year he marked the second National Day of Prayer of his administration with the same inaction. The president did, though, hold an Iftar dinner for Muslims, the feast breaking the daily fast during Ramadan, the holy month of Islam on August 13. He invited ambassadors from Islamic nations like Saudi Arabia to celebrate the Muslim event.

It was at this event that he expressed his support for the mosque near the site of where the Twin Towers were taken down by Muslim terrorists. While his press secretary declined to state the president's position on the issue earlier last week, calling it a question for "local decision-making," for some reason the president broke his silence during Ramadan observance and spoke out. Such off-teleprompter bombs have caused his press team headaches in the past, but they suggest Obama's unscripted, core beliefs and expose a rare – if ugly – honesty in his calculated public positions.

Perhaps the liberals running New York are getting inspiration from Obama, who doesn’t hold the traditional, church going American in very high regard. We are the “bitter clingers” he referred to when speaking to supporters in a part of the country that the left refers to as “fly over country.” Obama supports the construction of the mosque at ground zero because he knows how much of an insult it would be to ordinary Americans who simply want to worship in peace and have sacred ground remain sacred ground.

The plight of St. Nicholas is a microcosm of how the leftist ruling class views the other 75% of the country. Thwarting the reconstruction of an existing Christian church while fast-tracking the construction of a new Islamic mosque—at Ground Zero—is spitting in the eye of America.

Update: Doug Ross @ Journal has a different possibility for why the Obama mosque might get a little special nudge.